A multitude of hands went
up to shade the eager eyes, and exclamations of wonder burst out from
many men at the sight of a crowd of canoes of various sizes and kinds
lying close together with the effect as of an enormous raft, a little
way off the side of the Emma. The excited voices rose higher and higher.
There was no doubt about Tengga's being on the lagoon. But what was
Jorgenson about? The Emma lay as if abandoned by her keeper and her
crew, while the mob of mixed boats seemed to be meditating an attack.
For all his determination to keep thought off to the very last possible
moment, Lingard could not defend himself from a sense of wonder and
fear. What was Jorgenson about? For a moment Lingard expected the side
of the Emma to wreath itself in puffs of smoke, but an age seemed to
elapse without the sound of a shot reaching his ears.
The boats were afraid to close. They were hanging off, irresolute; but
why did Jorgenson not put an end to their hesitation by a volley or
two of musketry if only over their heads? Through the anguish of his
perplexity Lingard found himself returning to life, to mere life with
its sense of pain and mortality, like a man awakened from a dream by a
stab in the breast. What did this silence of the Emma mean? Could she
have been already carried in the fog? But that was unthinkable.
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